Pages

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Holiday Weekend Fun

Another Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone. I hope your celebrations were awesome! As far as fun, food, family and friend time and relaxing at home, this one ranks very high on the list. I really enjoyed every moment of it.

I worked on Thanksgiving Day so Rob was in charge of getting the turkey in the oven. We did the high roast spatchcock method, here are some details. Preheat the oven to 450 Fahrenheit, parchment-line a deep roasting pan (a two-piece broiler grill pan works really well for this) then fill the pan with dressing, potatoes or a combination of both and place the rack on top.

Our 13-pound turkey was from Trader Joe's and came brined. I had cut out the back bone and broke the breast bone of the turkey the day before. Here's a tutorial. It's not particularly difficult, just a bit messy. I placed a trash bag on the kitchen counter topped with a layer of paper towels as my work surface and this makes clean up a snap. Place the turkey on top of the rack and brush it with melted butter.

Place in the oven, making sure the bird is right in the middle of the oven. 90 minutes later, you'll have a perfectly cooked, moist and juicy bird with crisp as bacon skin.

Set the turkey to rest, remove the rack and put the pan back in the oven to brown the top of the potatoes and dressing, about 30 minutes.

Perfecto! I did something different for the vegetable dish, I made a salad. It added a light, fresh touch to the meal. I roasted golden beets and served them on a bed baby super greens, added a few spiced pecans and a few bits of Gorgonzola cheese and served it with a maple Dijon lemon dressing. New tradition!

Of course there was homemade cranberry orange dressing and shallot vermouth gravy. And wine. The turkey was perhaps the best one to come from our kitchen.

Dessert was clementine chess tart. This was the surprise hit of the day. Chess pie contains eggs and dairy but is a bit richer than a custard style pie because you cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy before adding the eggs and dairy. I flavored it with the zest and juice lemon and clementines. Next time less sugar, more citrus.

After dinner I put together a gobbler cobbler with the leftovers to have for Sunday dinner and the rest of the turkey meat got shredded and put into the curry sauce to marinate overnight. Friday brought the annual curry cook-off. In addition to the turkey tikka masala, I made a contribution to the dessert table, my homage to the Twinkie. Golden cake topped with a rich frosting similar to the famous cream filling. Tasty!

Here I am ready to go. My curry took second place and I was team captain of the winning trivia team. Team Success Fist! The winning curry was loaded with chunks of paneer cheese, and you just can't compete with cheese. It's a fact. A good time was had by all.

Saturday was just one of those perfect relaxing days. And as relaxing days go, it's always an epic battle between Tally and me for the best seat in the house. Mamma, I stole your spot!

We watched Moonrise Kingdom and Prometheus and had the first fire of the season. Love sitting by a wood fire. So cozy.

I've got the house cleaners coming in about a week for a deep clean before decking the halls of Shady Dame. I loved that Thanksgiving fell early this year, it's going be lovely to have a week to just be before the merry winter festivities begin.

2 comments:

I was just saying to my mother yesterday that I was glad Thanksgiving was earlier because there are a lot of events that go on here the first weekend of December along with Thanksgiving weekend and this year they are a week apart so we can do more of them.